I had an interesting chat with Bernard Priest, Manchester council’s executive member for finance, about the town hall budget this week.

We spoke about the council tax freeze for 2010/11 – ‘not easy’, he said, but the right thing to do at a time when residents were facing as many economic difficulties as large public-sector organisations.

We also talked about budget’s for future years. The council knows how much it is getting from the government for 2010/11, but not for subsequent years.

Neither does it know what political stripe the government will be after May 6.

Despite this – and despite all parties accepting the need for cuts in public spending – Coun Priest said he was still aiming for a council tax increase of no more than ONE per cent in 2011/12 and 2012/13.

How is this affordable? He spoke of more intelligent, joined-up ways of working – and also the loss of ‘hundreds’ of posts, to be achieved through ‘natural wastage’ rather than redundancies.

Apparently the council has already saved more than £50million through an efficiency drive in recent years.